WHOCHURCH: The Chris Chibnall era

some actual ideas

o rly?

Yes.

I would enjoy reading a longer post about them if you have the time.

Be fair, there are definitely ideas in this. I'm not sure Gallifreyans being descended from the good people of County Cork will turn out to be a GOOD idea, but it's an idea.

If local garda Brendan ends up being Doctor Who’s mum instead of The Lone Cyberman, I will doff my cap to his chibs

God ok maybe actually watching this is less dispiriting than merely reading about it from a safe distance?

The idea of Chibnall using crayon to scrawl his Big Ideas all over the show's mythos is... dud

Reading the novelisation of Day Of The Doctor, and enjoyed a new joke in (the completely rewritten version of) this scene so much I looked it up to compare & contrast:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUjH-ksc2Z4

and god, the amount of visual & audio storytelling in this two minutes outdoes the average Chibnall episode in total. It's bonkers that so many Moffat eps got injuriously filleted down to 43 minutes when Chibnall gets 49 every week, and just fills it with three members of the cast describing what's happening to each other, instead of using moving pictures and editing to communicate to the audience

The novelisation of Day of The Doctor (and audiobook of same) is one of my very favourite Doctor Who things.

Despite having watched DOTD several times I only just noticed the totally intentional and acceptable joke of how they got from the Tower of London to Trafalgar Square so quickly in that clip.

He’d guessed what had happened the moment the TARDIS had been lifted off the ground, and he’d dashed straight for the phone when itstarted to ring. As he threw himself out of the door hundreds of feet above London, he’d reflected, not for the first time, that wiring your principal communications device to the outside of your spaceship was not always practical. He managed to grab the phone, and Clara his ankles.

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, the head of the Unified Intelligence Taskforce. ‘We had no idea you were still in there!’
‘You phoned me!’ screamed the Doctor, hoping Clara would manage to keep hold.
‘You’ve listed this number as your mobile.’
‘It’s the TARDIS — how much more mobile do you get?’

btw

Just to be perfectly clear, there's no breed of Irish woman who, when her husband returns from town with a baby that he didn't leave for town with, will rush towards him with silent wonder.

(I thought the character moments were better than usual, though the plot script was much much worse)

Why did partial cyberman start molesting the cybermen in storage for no apparent reason?

That would be the ascension, the exact import of which is yet to become clear.

How did spaceship that was missing foo many parts to fly get going with about 30 seconds of work?

Very poorly!

But they only molested two or three of them. Very odd.

Only three of the Lone Cybermens, and one drill. Guess they don't have time to do the thousands of tinned Cyberpeople in one episode.

A friend has pointed out that this is the first sight of Ireland in Doctor Who - obviously if we're a race that can turn the last Timelord into the last Cyberman, some buildup was required!

turn the last Timelord into the last Cyberman

Did I miss something?

Just speculation - the puzzle of the episode is "who is Brendan?" - he could be the Da out of Derry Girls, but he might also be Ashad.

Ah okay - even if he's a Time Lord, there are two others in this episode, another one in this series, and an entire planet of them onscreen in this ep though, which rather threw me

That Matt Smith clip feels v bittersweet

I mean, even the throwaway ravens line is better than 99-100% of the past two seasons

Otm re the novel by the way. It’s like all good Moffat and very little bad Moffat (ok, Osgood chapters notwithstanding)

yeah that clip mercilessly drove home the diminished circs of the current show

man jenna coleman was so so so good

novelisation of Day of The Doctor is one of my very favourite Doctor Who things.

Just read “Chapter 10” (the fourth chapter) and yeah, this is definitely the best Who novelisation ever, probably the best Who novel ever, and maybe the best piece of Dr Who ever

Sooooooo...

Ehh.

Pretty impressive that they got JJ Abrams to write, and Barry Letts to direct, an episode in 2020 though

just thought i'd check. y'all get back to hatin', i'm out again

ngrrgh

Interesting: the Doctor being special because of how they choose to act
Dull: the Doctor being special because they're some sort of chosen one

Who is Ashad? they implied that he's the timeless child due to the same flashback events in a different setting, but then he's not, so idk
Who is the Timeless Child? the cartmel masterplan
Why where the Cybermen torturing other Cybermen? no explanation
What was the lie of the Timeless Child? the timelords never mentioned the child, so this lie didn't exist
How did the Doctor save humanity from the destruction she herself created? she didn't

The purpose of the Cartmel plan was to add more mystery to the series. That's not going to happen when all of the details are dumped out in expositional speeches that don't affect the current story. Impressive that Chibnall's been at it so long and he's still writing for radio.

Chibnall still doesn't understand the nonviolence idea. It's OK to make a genocide button, just as long as you hand it over to someone else to push it. I got A.E. van Vogt vibes from that weapon. Next stop, NRA.

It's bonkers that so many Moffat eps got injuriously filleted down to 43 minutes when Chibnall gets 49 every week, and just fills it with three members of the cast describing what's happening to each other, instead of using moving pictures and editing to communicate to the audience

This week Chinballs got 70 minutes - just seven minutes less than global event & massive multi-platform profit centre Day Of The Doctor - and filled 87% of it with one character standing still against non-existent backgrounds, being told exposition that doesn't actually affect the story in any way whatsoever.

--

((oh lol xpost, I had the tab open from abanana's previous post))

http://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/the-timeless-child-review/

that ranking!

Enjoyed this mostly but Catweasel coming in to take the Doc's place while the Master just stood there was pretty poor. Maybe I'll rewatch to understand the point of the Irish popo thing because still don't.

My biggest grian was reserved for the reveal of the title of the next episode.

What happened to all the humans catweazle had already put through the portal?

They fell into a plothole

They just go to random places in the universe, possibly dying in the process iirc

So after a while, the portal was like, "fuck it, i'm only sending people to galifrey from now on?"

Yeah I was thinking the portal wasn't always linked to the same place.
But the Master had lined it up to go along with his plans. Seemed to be that the old guy who was left as the last person watching it had been there alone for decades or something like that.

Catweazle didn't go "whoa, that's a new planet, it's never looked like that before through the mystic portal" so the 'normal' destination is clearly Gallifrey.

The biggest takeaway for me is that flying towels are cleverer than the entirety of Time Lord society.

obvs this episode was bollocks but this

How did the Doctor save humanity from the destruction she herself created? she didn't

was especially stupid

the timeless child retcon didn't really bother me, it's an idea that seems tailor-made for ignoring or retconning. nu-who has done so many "surprise doctor!" stories now, i'm not sure how this works as a long-term story generating tool (outside of comics - would be great for comics)

i did wince every time sacha dhawan said "tecteun". and it was a *lot* of times

Catweazle didn't go "whoa, that's a new planet, it's never looked like that before through the mystic portal" so the 'normal' destination is clearly Gallifrey.

That his last line in the first part, isn't it?

Was it? It was lost for me multiple times in all the exposition then.

Might also have been handy for him to say something like "every time it opens up it looks different" (which I concede he may well have done).

just checked and his line is "I've never seen it look like that before" but it's p buried under electronic drums and cyber-clonking marching noises

DW-TTC: (One of may fave bad lines this season was in last week’s episode, where a portal is described as *always* opening on a new and random location ever time. And when its guardian sees it open he looks and says “It’s never looked like that before!”) #tweetnotes

— Andrew Ellard (@ellardent) March 2, 2020

god this sounds so bad

it's definitely much worse than you're imagining.

It's difficult to get across Sacha Dhawan's performance in text, for a start.

Thought the concesnsus was that he was one of the few good things about it?

I don't even know where I'd find the consensus, I just come here. But yeah, even with a dead script to work with, he was terrible.

Stupid to even begin looking for logic in this mess, but WHY DID PRE-HARTNELL MARTIN DOCTOR'S TARDIS LOOK LIKE A POLICE BOX?

Also, WHEN did the Doctor have these Irish metaphor-memories? Never saw that happen.

Chibnall's awful fucking writing, argh, fuck.